Elder Thomas Jensen: 蚊子

We made it up into the mountains last Monday. It was super entertaining being up there at a beautiful Buddhist temple with an awesome view of the "Ghost Month" celebrations. We got off the bus and immediately heard chanting and music from up high. We get up there to see men dressed in bright yellow uniforms and women in bright yellow robes. Some were burning ritual money, some were worshipping, and 10 women chanted nonstop for what was probably hours. Granted, Chinese Daoism is not the same it used to be as it and Buddhism have all but completely morphed into the same religion within the past centuries, however, traditional Chinese Daoism looks entertaining. I'm sure their festivals were fun back in the day.

I finished reading The Miracle of Forgiveness this week. Glad it only took my 3 weeks. It was harsh, but it ended on a good note. I might understand why the church stopped printing it, it's not one that everyone and their dog should read. But overall, I was influenced by it to take up some additional self-reflection.

We had a fun lesson this last week. The first thing that they bring up before we could even start was all about "Women's rights in the church" and polygamy. What do you do with that as a missionary such as myself? Recent stuff online really is causing more and more questions to come up.

The highlight of the week was visiting our beloved LA up on the mountain. The title of this means mosquitos in Chinese. We went up there looking our best all dressed up in shirts and ties ready to do a little service. Good news is she made us food! We ate some bean soup and curry rice (all the while her drunkard friend is getting up to throw up right outside the door every three minutes...) Even better news was after pulling weeds and being eaten alive by mosquitos for an hour, my shirt was still mostly white and my tie still fairly clean as well.

But, why was that experience significant? It was the first time I have actually "thrust in my sickle." Working with those sickles is pretty fun stuff, taking handfulls of grass and just hacking away at it. I enjoyed it. Minus the mosquitos.

We had some cool experiences this week. One man we meet with told us he got goosebumps a lot when I shared my testimonies with him. One thing that has definitely happened on this mission of mine is I have developed a testimony. Who would've seen that coming?

The world is beautiful. I'm so glad I'm discovering this part of it here in Asia.

Love you all! Happy Labor Day weekend! (If I remember right...)